Waking Up
by wth18
Summary: Pastiche of 'Normal Again' from Buffy. Only with Harper instead of Buffy.


Harper woke up screaming, with cold sweat pouring off of his face and sticking his clothes to his skin. His heart was beating like a rabbit's and he was gasping for air, his back going up and down as his chest heaved. Beka, who had been walking past his quarters, stopped and rushed in. She saw Harper sitting up in bed, his head in his hands, moaning in fear. She crossed the room and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him to try and get him to calm down.

'Harper!' she screamed. ''Calm down! It's me, Beka. What happened?'

He managed to calm down and said: 'I… I had a nightmare.'

'It must have been pretty bad; it sounded like you were being murdered in here! What was it about?' she asked incredulously, searching his face for a clue as to what might have scared him so much.

'I… I woke up and I was in some kind of hospital… or something. There was a man in there. He saw me looking at him and he just kept staring at me, with his mouth open like he'd seen a ghost or something, then he started yelling his head off. I got worried then, so I jumped up and tried to hit him, so I could escape, but then some more people came in. They grabbed me and held me down, and put me in one of those jacket things that they used to put crazy people in so that they couldn't move. Then one of them had a needle and they stuck it in my neck and then I woke up and I was so scared…' he broke off, sobbing, and Beka held him in her arms, making soothing sounds in his ear. It wasn't the first time he had had one of these dreams, but there had never been one this bad.

'Come on, Seamus, I'm here now. It's OK, it was just a dream. Look, we'll get some breakfast inside you and then you'll be fine, I promise,' she said firmly, helping him to stand up. The engineer took a couple of deep breaths then smiled at her sadly. Beka realised how vulnerable he looked; standing there in his pyjamas and shivering, and it broke her heart.

'I'm fine now, it was just a bit of a shock,' he said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than her. 'I'll get dressed first, though. I have too much pride to walk around the Andromeda in my PJs.'

Beka nodded and left. Harper sat back down on the bed, trying to control his shaking hands and chattering teeth. It wasn't as if the dream had been that bad, he'd had a lot worse. He'd had dreams full of blood and gore and monsters, memories of his years in the human ghetto had haunted him. But this dream was different, because it had been so real. He could remember every detail vividly, and it was as though he'd been awake throughout it. He waited a few more minutes until he was sure he could face everyone again, then stood up and started to dress slowly.

'Morning, Harper. Are you feeling any better?' Beka asked as he came through the doors. He looked like someone should have stuck a sign on his forehead saying "in another world, back in five minutes."

'Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine,' he replied. Trance, who had been sitting on a stool reading a holo-novel, looked up at him and smiled at him. 'Good morning,' she said sweetly. 'What would you like for breakfast?' He didn't reply, just sat down, frowning. 'Harper, can you hear me?'

A sudden flash of pain wrapped itself round Harper's skull, like someone had hit him round the back of the head. He gasped in agony, and shook his, head trying to rid himself of the feeling. He could hear Trance's voice saying over and over again: 'Harper, can you hear me? Harper can you hear me? Can you…' He keeled over, fell off the stool, but he didn't feel himself hit the floor. Instead, his eyes snapped open, the pain disappeared and someone's hand was on his shoulder. Someone was talking to him.

'Seamus, can you hear me?' the voice said, but it wasn't Trance. The man from his dream was squatting in front of him, talking to him softly. He was wearing some kind of white coat, and at first Harper thought he had died and this was an angel. Then he saw the white walls and tiles. He was sitting in the corner of a tiny cell, with his back to the wall. He looked around, puzzled, and then cleared his throat.

'Where… where am I?' he whispered, his throat sore like he hadn't spoken in a long time.

'You _can _hear me! Oh my… I have to take this down!' The man took out a notebook and started scribbling. It was strange; the action was familiar to Harper even though no one had used this method of recording in hundreds, no, _thousands _of years. 'Now, Seamus, do you know where you are?'

'Well if I knew, I wouldn't have asked' he said sarcastically. The man smiled, delighted. Then his expression turned serious.

'You're in Pendleton Psychiatric Hospital, Seamus, my name is Dr. Gene. I'm sorry if I seem a little excited, but you've never spoken to me before now! Do you know why you're here?'

'Psychiatric Hospital…?' Harper didn't know what to say. 'No… I… I'm just an engineer. Where's Beka? You need to talk to Dylan Hunt; he's my boss…' The man was shaking his head sadly.

'No, Seamus. I know that this is going to be hard to believe, but you've been here for ten years now. You were in a car crash, we thought you were in a coma at first, but you weren't. You just didn't seem to… to be aware of anything around you, not until recently. You would occasionally say things, snatches of words or phrases, but you weren't talking to us. We believe that you've been living in some kind of delusion, some futuristic world on a spaceship, but it wasn't real, Seamus, none of it was real. You're name is Seamus Harper, you had just finished college when the accident happened. You were very bright, you were going to go on to study French Literature and Natural Sciences. Don't you remember anything?' the man implored him desperately.

'But Beka said…' Harper began, but the man interrupted him.

'_No_, Seamus, this girl… _Beka_, she isn't real, none of it was real. Seamus? Do you understand me? Can you still hear me, Seamus…?' but his voice was getting fainter, and Harper felt that horrible sensation at the back of his head again. The room swirled into grey and white smears, then disappeared. He was back on the Andromeda.

'Harper! I think he's coming round. Wake up, Harper!' Beka yelled in his ear. Harper winced. Was there a universal conspiracy to give him a migraine? He turned his head away as Beka tried to force a glass of water down his throat.

'OK, OK, I'm fine!' he muttered. Which was a complete and utter lie, but he needed her off his back.

'OK? You scared the shit out of me, Harper! You just fell on the floor and started shaking and foaming at the mouth like you were having a seizure! What happened?'

'I…' Harper was about to tell her about the dream, but for some reason he didn't. Something stopped it. If it was anyone besides Beka, he would have called it suspicion, but that was ridiculous. He surely didn't believe that the dream he just had was real. It was just a figment of his demented little imagination, but he still didn't tell her the truth. 'I guess I just stood up too fast; I'm not properly awake yet.'

'Not good enough, Shorty, you're ill. Now get your ass back to bed and don't come back until you're in full health,' the blonde woman commanded him forcefully. Harper felt a cold wave of dread sweep his body; he had a nasty feeling that he knew what would happen if he went back to sleep, but Beka nodded at Trance, who took him by the arm and gently led him away. Maybe he should tell Trance, surely the mysterious golden girl would know what to do, but he didn't trust the new Trance as much as he had the old one, and wasn't sure if she would be any better than Beka.

They reached his quarters, but before Harper went inside, he paused and turned to Trance. 'Hey, do you ever wonder if all this is real. I mean, what if the whole universe is just a product of someone's overactive imagination?'

She gave him a strange look, then laughed. 'Don't try to be a philosopher, Harper, it doesn't suit you!' And with that she left him. Harper stared after her with an agonised expression. He didn't know what was going on, but he had a good idea where he might get some answers.

A spark of awareness lit up Seamus' eyes, and the three occupants of the room held a collective breath as he looked at each of them in turn. Doctor Gene was standing off to one side looking uncomfortable. He kept running a hand through his thick, dark hair. Directly in front of him were two people holding hands. One was a small woman with wiry, prematurely grey hair and tired red-rimmed blue eyes that were nevertheless filled with love and hope. Next to her was a man with blonde hair that was streaked with grey. He had dimples in his cheeks as he smiled in happiness at the young man on the bed in front of him. The woman was the first to speak.

'Seamus, are you awake? It's me, Mom.' She searched his face and then turned to the man and hugged him. 'It's happened, Dermot, he's awake! He's really awake!' She let go of him and took Harper's hand. 'Come on, Seamus, it's OK, Mom's here.'

'My mother is dead,' Harper said simply and cruelly. The woman seemed to deflate completely, her shoulders sagging and her eyes brimming with tears. The doctor saw and hurriedly said:

'It's OK, Mrs Harper, he doesn't know what he's saying. Seamus, these are your parents, do you remember them?' He watched Harper's face carefully for a reaction. Harper could only frown and shake his head. He felt a kind of recognition deep down inside of him, but he couldn't quite remember them. Then a rush of emotion filled his heart, a yearning for love and affection and the childhood that he should have had, and he leaned forward and hugged the woman. She gave a little cry of delight and hugged his head, stroking his dark blonde hair. The man looked uncomfortable, then crouched down and hugged him as well. After a few seconds they broke apart.

'I don't even know if this is real,' Harper said carefully, waiting for some kind of proof. His 'mother' laughed.

'Oh, come on, Seamus. What is more likely: that you were in a car crash that gave you brain damage, or that you live in the year 2785 or whatever it is and you're an engineer on a _spaceship_!' the woman laughed. Harper didn't know what to say; to him the latter was actually more likely. He was starting to get confused, and he felt that familiar twinge at the back of his head again. The doctor saw it again and hurriedly grabbed him and said:

'No, Seamus, you mustn't! Don't go back there; it's not real, do you hear? You've got to let them all go, all of them. If any of your 'friends' try to convince you that it's real, hit them, shoot them, do whatever you need to in order to come back to us. Your mind will do anything to trick you into accepting the delusion. It will use your trust against you… Seamus?' The blonde-haired man slumped in his grip and the doctor knew that he was gone again. He could hear the woman screaming Seamus' name in the background, and saw the nurses come in and restrain her from shaking her son to pieces. He stood up and cleaned his glasses, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. He was making a breakthrough in this case and he wasn't going to lose another patient.

'Ah, the prodigal engineer returns!' Beka said delightedly as he entered the room. 'Feeling better, Shorty? No more passing out, OK, I don't want to have to give you the kiss of life.'

Harper nodded warily, keeping her fixed with a strange look. His hand was unknowingly close to his gun. Beka frowned, but went on.

'Well, we've still got a couple of hull breaches from the last attack of Seraphims, but nothing life threatening. It would be good if you could make the repairs today, though, before the Andromeda starts to fall apart…'

'Beka, I need to ask you something,' he interrupted her, his speech faster than usual, as if he wanted to get the speech over and done with. 'And this is gonna sound really weird but I just want to you to answer me honestly.' He took a deep breath. 'Are you real?'

Beka was speechless. 'What… Harper you sure you're OK? I think you hit your head a little harder than you thought…'

'Just answer the goddamn question, please!' he yelled. Throughout the day the doubts had grown in his mind. The tiny inconsistencies, the way that he was always referring to things from the alternate universe that he visited in his dreams. He remembered on several occasions talking about The Silver Surfer and Aquaman, comic-book characters that he would have grown up reading if he really had lived when Dr Gene had told him he had. He remembered building the X-1, the sort of thing that he could imagine Seamus Harper, a college student with a flair for Natural Sciences and French Literature sitting down and reading about. It was the sort of thing that would get stuck in his head so that if he were to lose grip on reality, it would stay there.

'Harper I… of _course _I'm real,' Beka said, distressed at his tone. She leaned forward and grabbed his hand. 'You feel this, don't you Harper? This is real, isn't it?'

Harper stared at the slim, pale hand on top of his. He heard the doctor's words running through his head: _If any of your 'friends' try to convince you that it's real, hit them, shoot them, do whatever you need to in order to come back to us. Your mind will do anything to trick you into accepting the delusion. It will use your trust against you_… he gave a sob of confusion, and did something he had never done before. He yanked his hand free and used it to hit Beka hard across the face, hit her so hard that her head was flung back and she fell to the floor, sprawled on the cold ground with one hand on her reddening cheek. She gasped in fear and sat up, only to see that Harper was lying on the ground as well.

Thank goodness you're back; it's been three days!' Dr Gene said, offering Harper a glass of water.

'No thanks… oh no!' he said, remembering.

'What? What happened?'

'I… I hit Beka. Oh God, I really hit her hard! I might have hurt her, I have to go back, I have to see if…'

'Shhshh, Seamus, it's OK, you did the right thing. I expect the fact that you rejected your delusion and that you did something out of the ordinary, was what triggered your return to the real world. This is excellent, I'm so proud of you!' The doctor felt like hugging the poor man for his bravery, but Seamus looked far from happy.

'No, it wasn't excellent, it was bad. It was really bad. I've never hurt her before, and I don't want to do it again.'

'That's your fantasy talking, Seamus. You hit this girl, Beka, because you are beginning to see through your imagination into the truth. You're waking up, Seamus!'

'Well maybe I don't fucking _want _to wake up!' Harper yelled, taking the doctor by surprise. 'Maybe I was happy on the Andromeda, maybe that's what's real and all of this is just a crazy dream!'

'No, Seamus, it's not real. The… _Andromeda_… isn't real. You just watched too many science-fiction films and got confused between what is real and what isn't. When your head hit the dashboard, something went wrong in your head and everything that you saw on T.V. became more real for you than your real life. You may have been happy there, but have you ever heard the phrase that ignorance is bliss? _This _is where you belong, with your family. Now, next time you find yourself on board the Andromeda, I want you to fight it. Do whatever it takes; kill the people in it, destroy it all, do anything but accept that what you see is true!' Seamus, you have to!' the doctor said desperately.

The man was about to respond, then winced and began rubbing the back of his head as if someone had just hit him.

'Harper! Why the hell did you do that? _Why_? You really hurt me, Harper?' Beka yelled, shaking him. One of her cheeks was badly bruised and she was stuck somewhere between fear and fury.

'I… I'm so sorry, Beka, I just went crazy, I flipped out. I've been having these dreams and…'

'No, Seamus! You're doing it again! Your mind is making you feel guilty about hurting her, but you mustn't listen to her,' the doctor had grabbed him exactly the same way that Beka had and was shaking him just like she was.

'Shoot her, Seamus!' his mother cried from the doorway where she had been listening to Harper's confused ramblings.

'No… no… not gonna hurt her. Beka, I'm sorry!' Harper sobbed as he snapped painfully back to the Andromeda in a whirl of colour and anguish.

'Hurt me? Harper… Rommie, Dylan, _somebody _help me! Harper? What are you doing? What are…' Her eyes went wide as Harper pulled the gun from its holster and pointed it at her. She doubted if he would be able to get a good hit, his hands were shaking so much, but she didn't want to have to take that risk. 'Stop it, Harper! Who's telling you to do this?'

'Shut up! You're not real, none of you are! Oh, Beka, I'm sorry…'

'No… no you're not!' Doctor Gene yelled at him, his voice full of desperation as he Seamus met his own wide brown eyes with his tear-filled blue ones. 'Come on, let it go, your family need you now. Let it all go, Seamus, you can have your life back.'

'I… I have a life…'

'OK, you have a life, so why are you trying to take away mine?' Beka demanded fiercely. 'What's the matter with you? Harper, you have to believe me, I'm real, do you hear? Whoever's doing this to you, whoever's trying to trick you into thinking that the Andromeda isn't real, they're lying.'

'You're lying…'

'No, Seamus, I'm telling you the truth. Now do it… shoot her!' the doctor yelled, his glasses starting to steam up with tears of stress.

Harper seemed to calm down. He held the gun steady and blinked the tears from his eyes as he realised that he didn't need anyone to tell him what was real and what wasn't. He smiled through his tears, smiled with a kind of blind happiness.

'Real…' he whispered. Then he lifted the gun and fired, hearing the gunshot ricochet round the room as Dylan rushed through the door a few seconds too late.

'Well done, Seamus, you did it!' The doctor had watched as Seamus had mimed lifting up an imaginary gun and firing it, and then looked at him with a big, relieved smile.

'I did it,' he whispered. 'I fired the gun.'

'Yes you did, Honey, we've got you back now,' his mother sighed, then encased him in a loving hug. He could smell the talcum-powdery smell mixed in with the scent of her perfume. He hugged her back.

'I love you,' he murmured in her ear.

'I love you too,' she whispered back.

'One thing though,' he said, pulling away from her. He looked at the doctor and smiled happily. 'You told me to fire the gun…' he said.

'Yes?' the doctor said warily.

'Didn't tell me where to fire it, though, didya?' his face split into an insane grin. The doctor stared at him for a moment, then leapt forward and grabbed his patient by the shoulders, disregarding hospital policy completely, and shook him wildly. The grin didn't leave Harper's face even as he slid back into unconsciousness. Right before he left he whispered:

'Bye-bye.' Then he was gone.

'It was still an insanely stupid thing to do,' Beka muttered sullenly. Harper had apologised profusely for hitting her round the face, although she wasn't as hurt as she was pretending to be.

'Yeah, well, we're all entitled to go a little insane once in a while,' he retorted, but he was grinning as he said it. Personally, he didn't know what she was complaining about; he was the one who would have to fix the couple of dozen wires that the bullet had sliced through as it smashed into the ceiling.

'Hmph,' Beka huffed.

'You're just lucky you didn't kill her,' Dylan snapped. He was a little sore about not getting to play the hero, but he was relieved that Beka was still alive. 'If you'd hit her with that bullet I would have been forced to kill you in an act of grief-stricken revenge.'

'Yeah, yeah, this from the guy who cries when he steps on an ant and wants to help the people who try to blow us up,' Harper said incredulously. Dylan and Beka looked at each other, and then left him to his repairs.

Harper picked up his soldering wand and pulled over a stool, stood on it and began to make repairs. He still wasn't sure how he had come to a decision, but his gut instincts had turned out to be true. The last time he had woken up on the Andromeda, Trance had intercepted waves of radioactivity from an enemy ship that had been cloaked. The waves had been meddling with Harper's mind and creating visions in his head to confuse him. Harper smiled and shook his head. He couldn't believe that he'd actually fallen for it, but at least now it was all cleared up. A sudden thought struck him and he dismissed it, humming as he began to fix the wires in the ceiling.

Doctor Gene shone the tiny torch in his patient's eyes, searching for a spark of recognition, of consciousness, but there was nothing. The body in front of him was just an empty shell; the mind was gone and he had severe doubts about its return.

'Well?' Mrs Harper said from behind him, her voice high with stress and hysteria. He took one last look at Seamus before standing up to face her.

'I'm sorry,' he said. He could have been the minister at a funeral. 'There's nothing more we can do, I'm afraid that the delusion was just too real for him to give it up. I doubt that we'll ever have anything like the contact we've had over the past week ever again.' The woman started sobbing quietly and had to be led away by a nurse.

The doctor turned back to Seamus. The man was sitting in his corner again; his eyes glazed over and dull. One leg was bent and up against his chest, the other stretched out on the floor in front of him. His blonde hair was limp and dirty and streaked with grey hairs, his face pale and his eyes dark at the edges. He would spend the rest of his life like this, in ignorance, unaware of anything that was going on around him, being fed through a tube for however many years he had left. His beating heart and lungs said that he was still alive, to Doctor Rodney Gene, 6 years out of medical school, the same age as Seamus but with a wife and a kid and a life, Seamus Harper was dead, another failed case, a blemish on hospital records. The doctor blinked away irrational tears and spoke into a tape recorder

'Patient suffered severe head injuries due to a road traffic accident in the summer of 1994, leading to brain damage. Cause of condition…' he sighed and took a deep breath. 'Acute schizophrenia. Will continue to administer stimulants, but odds of recovery are at least a million to one.' He snapped the tape recorder off. He had no time to let things get personal, not with an abused ten year-old and a man with an inferiority complex to deal with. He stood up, wincing at the premature crack of arthritis in his knees, and left the room, slamming the bolts home and locking the door.

In the dark, Seamus Harper smiled a little without realising he was doing it, and hummed a tune that no one would have recognised even if there was someone there to hear it.

Sometimes I give myself the creeps  
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me  
It all keeps adding up  
I think I'm cracking up  
Am I just paranoid?

-Greenday – Basket Case

**Morpheus**: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

**Morpheus**: I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, that's not far from the truth.

**Neo**: Why do my eyes hurt?  
**Morpheus**: You've never used them before.

-The Matrix

END


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